Brave As Hell
by IamThePasserby
Summary: Dean's not scared, not at all, but he wishes he would be, because at least then he would know how to be brave again. One-shot, set between 4.1 and 4.2


**Title: **Brave As Hell

**Summary**: Dean's not scared, not at all, but he wishes he would be, because at least then he would know how to be brave again.

**Word Count:** 2881 (one-shot)

**Author's Notes:** This was written as a gift for the AVerySPNXmas gift exchange of 2014, a digital secret santa organized and executed on Twitter. That said, I'm primarily a prompt-writer, but only one out of ten prompts get filled, so I sometimes fill my own prompts

. Like right now. Beta credit goes to Robbie, aka surfandstars.

**Dedication:** For KatieMHansen. A dean girl, an Ackles-holic, a feeler of feels and a fellow lover of the show I love most in the world. Because family don't end with blood, Merry Christmas, Katie. I'm sorry it's angsty and dark, but I don't really know how to do anything else, so I stuck with what I'm best at, and that's making people cry for feels. Hope that's okay!

**Prompt Filled:** "The nightmares are the ones involving Sam's blood, not his" by iamthepasserby (AlanahC) at shangrilada . Livejournal 1058 . Html ?thread=1724756#t1724756 on 10/5/12, 8:09 am.

**Rated:** M for brief language, some descriptions of hell/torture/gore, violence.

**Verse:** Canon, post-hell Dean. Between 4.1 and 4.2.

**Other Notes:** Dean-centric, Dean-3rd-person, parentheticals, run-on sentences, thought-speak, gratuitous italics, general format rule-breaking. I'm not even sorry. At least my tenses are consistent.

There's not a whole lot that scares Dean anymore. Though he would've denied it before, a lot used to scare him. Losing Sammy, losing Dad, being alone, being helpless… standard stuff. But Dad disappeared (he came back), and then he died. And Sammy left (temporarily), and then he died (but just temporarily, dammit), and then it all went to hell.

Or rather, just Dean. Dean went to hell, and gained a whole new definition for "helpless", a whole host of definitions, in fact. Black haired, short, blonde, fat, old, tanned, or red-headed and pale and screaming screaming screaming.

He's dreaming about one of them right now.

_She's tall, tall for her age, he can tell. She's younger than they usually get down here, so she must've made a deal, because it's rare for kids to die and have done something truly terrible enough to land a spot on Dean's rack. Dean can see the care that had to have gone into managing that long, soft red hair, a strange streak of pretty amidst the meaty red and coal black and bright burning everywhere. He steps close to her, and she's crying slow, beaded tears when he reaches out to touch it, tracking soot and grime and blood through the strands. She cries harder, then, so Dean makes sure to cut her hair off first, piece by piece in front of her face, sullying it, tossing it to the fire, eating some, until she's sobbing and sobbing and her little cropped head bobs with it. He puts a hand to her pale little cheek and shushes her lightly, as if to comfort her, and she looks up at him with green terror in her big eyes, sheened and bloodshot and reflecting back his cruel smile._

_He leaves a dark smudge of a handprint on her face, and he keeps the smile as he begins to skin her._

Dean wakes with a gasp and bolts upright, feeling like he's choking on the clean air and the lack of smoke. There isn't enough _smoke_, being topside is startling and fresh and alive and it shocks him every time.

"Dean?"

Dean turns to look, and Sam is to his right in the motel room, in his own bed. He's rubbing his eyes like a kid, and everything is in duotone blue in the moonlight streaming pretty and calm through the window. Dean looks at Sam, and wonders vaguely what Sam sees in Dean's smiles anymore, whether he sees cruelty or confusion or just the secret decades gone by hidden somewhere in there.

"I'm fine, sorry," Dean shakes his head and focuses on the starchy feel of the sheets and the paisley swirls on his comforter. He can still see Sam's face go earnest and concerned in his periphery.

"Nightmare?" Sam asks, and Dean knows he's just trying to be a brother, dammit, but Dean was dreaming about skinning a little girl and it wasn't even what he'd call a nightmare, he wasn't even scared, so yeah, how about you shut the fuck up and stop looking at me like I'm…I dunno, like I'm something. Or at least, that's what Dean thinks.

"Go back to sleep, Sam," is what he says out loud, and he rolls over so he's facing the front door instead of his brother, and expects Sam to push, but he doesn't, which is a surprise, but 'small mercies' and all that. Dean times his breathing as he counts the tiles in the gaudy mosaic on the wall, and waits for Sam to fall asleep before he allows himself to move. He scrunches up his face and pulls hard on his own hair.

Dean used to be scared all the time, but he was also brave. He knew that he was braver than most men he'd met or ever would meet in this life, just by nature of the fact that he knew how much there was to be afraid of and he still went at it swinging. He knows that, but it's been two weeks since he got back from hell and there's this freaky angel who says God wants him for Mission Impossible, and Sam is trying to talk all the time, and Bobby is calling to check on them every other day and Dean feels anything, _everything_ but brave.

The weird, disgusting thing about experiencing hell and then coming back to life is that nothing seems scary anymore, so Dean's not scared, not at all, but he wishes he would be, because at least then he would know how to be brave again.

Dean only gets that one half hour of sleep so he spends most of the next day feeling pretty lousy, but he thinks he does a pretty good job of not showing it. He works on the car (what did Sam even _do_ to these brakes, is he stopping on the edge of cliffs or something, for cryin' out loud), and Sam takes their crap to the laundry place across the street (Dean makes a point of making some cheap joke about how girly Sam is, and Sam responds in proper form with something about feminism). It's quiet and breezy outside, and Dean tries to settle into a mode or something. They're not hitting the papers too hard just yet, they'll probably start to look for a hunt tomorrow, but he almost misses lunch (because he'd forgotten that eating was allowed, and he was just expecting his hunger to sit in his belly and fester until his gut started eating itself, he had _actually forgotten_ about food) until Sam makes him pick between pizza or a Chinese place (Chinese, because the slick red of pizza sauce is a thing he can do without for a while).

This is all to say that, later in the evening, when Sam surprises Dean again and tries to casually suggest that they hit up the diner bar down the street (he _tries_ to be casual but Sam is so big (bigger than Dean remembers, the kid is friggin huge all of a sudden) that anything he tries to be casual about looks like a parody of something, like he reaches for his toothbrush and it looks staged, like a giant puppet person) Dean is really tired but he absolutely does not want to sleep, so yes, yeah, the diner sounds good, a legitimately crappy beer and some greasy fries and bulk-bought ranch dressing sounds freaking excellent.

"Sure," is what he says, though.

They sit down and Dean orders two Yuenglings (and thanks whatever that they're in eastern Pennsylvania right now), only Sam wrinkles his nose and good naturedly says, "Make that one Yuengling for him, and the IPA on tap for me." Dean waits till the gal turns away to give him a look.

"Since when do you drink IPAs?" Sam doesn't look quite embarrassed, but he does some sort of shrug and says, "I don't know, I acquired a taste. Bitter is good, sometimes."

Dean smirks and looks around the place, but he can't help feeling off. The small details of Sam's clothes or habits have been slowly revealing themselves as shifted from what Dean remembers, and he keeps having that weird swoop in his gut like stepping for a stair step that isn't there. It's not a big deal, Dean knows that. He missed a few months of life for the kid, and stuff changes, people change. Some little things are different, and he just has to learn em and get used to them, and it'll stop seeming weird.

Except that Sam has stopped folding his socks. He keeps them in a bag now, just sort of tossed in there. And he does this thing with his shoes, where he takes them off and immediately puts them by the bed to step into the next day, which is so not like him, when he always used to put them in his bag or against the far wall. And it's so contrary to the sock thing, like he's organized and neat and then haphazard and blasé and the whole thing is just weird. It's weird, because if he's honest, he felt some kind of ownership of the little things about Sam. He remembers teaching the kid how to fold his socks (never mind that Dean always lost his because he never folded them), and he remembers buying Sam his first beer, and he used to be the only man alive who knew what brand of toothpaste Sam liked best, where he kept his shoes at night, what sentence would come out of his mouth after Dean said this or that, and now Sam feels like this vague other.

Dean knows that's not the case. Four months (forty _years_, how, _how_ can it only have been…) is not long enough for Sam to be unrecognizable or have any tremendous lifestyle switches. Dean would have noticed anything big.

Still, somehow, sometimes, the Sam he's come back to doesn't seem like his Sam (and he feels guilty and ridiculous just thinking about it that way, damn). He has this alien way about him because Dean keeps stepping on foundational steps that aren't there anymore and missing his footing, and wondering how he could have missed the new things, and why the new things are even there to begin with. Its like he took a version of Sam to hell with him in his mind, and while he was there it was this thought that maintained any semblance of sanity in him, just Sam, missing Sam, Sam and his hair, Sam and his bitch faces, Sam and his geek boy literary references, Sam asleep in the car, Sam and his curvy eyebrows, Sam Sam Sam.

He feels sweepingly, disgustingly guilty, because it's as if, in some stupid, figurative way, he took Sam to hell with him, and it feels like he left him there.

Or maybe he just-

"Anything else I can getcha boys?"

Dean snaps to attention, and smiles at the gal.

"Sure, I'll have another, thanks," then lowers his voice to Sam, "Be right back," and motions toward the bathroom, which is just a few feet away from their booth. He hears Sam ask about darts for the dart board as he goes, and lets out a big, easy breathe as he reaches the bathroom because that, at least, is a familiar thing.

Just as he gets back out through the bathroom door, a six foot tall, redneck cliche ambles right into Dean.

Bearded, bleary eyes, and plaid. So much plaid. He smells of malt liquor and scrapple, which is one of the less great combos Dean's ever come across, thanks. Normally (decades ago), Dean would be kind of pissed that someone just ran him over like he was road, but he's tired and just wants to play some darts with his brother, so he catches the guy and purses his lips before, "Watch where you're going." He's ready to let it and him go and walk away, only the guy kind of throws a hand out and shoves Dean's shoulder a bit, and says loudly, "Go to hell, man."

Dean honestly doesn't even flinch. He doesn't really register that it might be something he'd be justified flinching at, or exploding over. He might not even have noticed the remark at all if, as he took his next step toward the booth, Sam hadn't come barreling past him like some colossal cannonball, and what-

Sam has the guy down on the ground and is beating his face in, a sick crunching and thudding as he hammers his fist into his brow, his jaw, and Jesus, Jesus _Christ_, what is happening.

"Sam. _Sam_, holy shit-" Everything suddenly seems too loud, the gal who had been waiting on them earlier screams and a couple of guys are trying to pull Sam off, and Dean reaches out to help but oh god, he's never seen Sam like this, the guy hadn't done anything, he'd only spouted a throw away insult, he hadn't _meant_-

"Sam stop! Stop, Sammy, c'mon!" Dean reaches an arm around Sam's chest to bodily lift him off of the guy, but finds that he actually can't, and what the _fuck_?

Everything is still too loud, someone is crying, people are shouting, _Sam_ is shouting, the kid is spitting the kind of profanity that _Dad_ would have smacked him across the mouth for, things Dean has never said himself. Sam is swearing curses at this guy on the ground in ways Dean didn't even know existed (in ways he never thought he'd hear Sam use, the kid went to Stanford for fuck's sake), not that the dude hears em, because his face isn't much besides blood and pulp now, and if Dean doesn't get Sam off this guy, shit, shit, he's going to die and Sam's gonna be a murderer, an actual real life murderer with no ghoul or ghost buffering the morality line.

"Help me!" Dean bellows, and with a guy from the kitchen and another customer, they manage to finally, barely pull him off, and Sam is heaving breaths like he's rabid, like some bull itching to get out the gate and lose it all over again, and it's insane, and Dean looks down and sees teeth, honest to fuck _teeth_ on the ground.

Dean wasn't even offended by this man, but Sam has completely lost his mind, apparently.

Dean uses whatever strength he can muster (he can muster a crapton of strength, okay), and shoves, and runs Sam back against the wall. He keeps an arm across his brother's chest and grabs his face with his other hand to bring Sam's wild gaze down to him.

"_Sam_, Sammy, SAM. You need to calm down _right now_, do you hear me? Stow your- this, whatever this is, can it! Get it together."

Sam is breathing hard and angry through his nose, and Dean hears sirens. The diner is quiet except for someone crying and someone trying to get the guy on the floor to wake up.

And damn, Dean will admit it, he's actually kind of scared right now.

Sam's kind of zoned out by the time the cops get in there, and he is reasonably docile when they arrest him, while everyone around them stares, terrified. It takes Dean all of forty minutes to bust him out of the holding cell.

They don't talk in the car, Dean can't even look at him right now, but he knows that he needs to set something straight now, because he thinks that Sam would've killed that guy, he would definitely have killed him if he hadn't snapped out of it, and Dean doesn't even know how to process that shit.

If this was really about someone casually tossing the word 'hell' to Dean's back…then Dean doesn't know what to say, because Sam's not the hot-headed one, because Sam's not the over-protective, over-reacting bar-fight guy, and because he _has_ to have known that this was grossly wrong.

Dean unlocks the motel room door and realizes his hands are tense, and his thumb is white where he presses it against the key ring. He's angry, too, he realizes, and he doesn't want to sit down, so he just shuts the door and watches Sam head into the bathroom for the first aid kit.

Sam's knuckles look like he's fought a cheese grater. Dean needs to bandage them. Dean _wants_ to bandage them, but he needs to say something first, and he doesn't know what to say.

So instead he takes a breath, steps over, and takes the first aid kit from Sam's hands. Sam sits and Dean kneels by the bed and he goes through the routine.

He looks up once, and stops, because Sam is crying, and what, Dean hasn't even said anything.

"I didn't even say anything."

Sam laugh-cries a wet chuckle or something.

"I know, I just…I'm sorry. I'm, I'm sorry, I didn't mean- he just said that to you and I was so angry and I-" he takes a hitched breathed and looks terrified about what he's admitting, and there, _there_ is Dean's Sam, there's his kid brother, where the heck has he been for the last two weeks, "I actually wanted to kill him, I wanted him to- to die for saying that to you, you've saved so many people and you died and you were gone and there was no one to take the first aid kit out of my hands and do this for me and he didn't _know_, no one even _knows_ what you did for me, and you don't deserve- I couldn't- I'm sorry, God, Dean, I'm sorry."

Dean is staring, and Sam is crying in earnest now, so Dean just says, "Okay."

That only seems to make Sam cry harder, so Dean hugs him and lets him get it out, and then he puts him to bed like he's a child, but feels hyper aware of how big Sam is, how strong he can be, and how out of control Dean felt when his brother had been a momentary stranger.

Dean sleeps that night, and doesn't dream, but he wakes up terrified, and suddenly remembers what it's like to be brave again.


End file.
